The State of the Edge consortium, which launched in 2018 to explain Edge computing, has merged its efforts into the Linux Foundation, having published a report predicting huge growth in the new niche.

The group's 2020 report, which follows on its first 2018 publication, predicts Edge will gather a total of $700 billion in capex investment in the next decade, and usher in a new era for further investment and growth. The group's reports are published under a Creative Commons license, and it has now been "acquired" by the open-source standards and promotion group The Linux Foundation, formally becoming part of the LF Edge effort.

On the Leading Edge?

"The edge is the Third Act of the Internet, building upon previous phases of regionalization and origination," says the State of the Edge 2020 report, edited by Matt Trifiro, CMO at Edge data center firm Vapor IO, and Jacob Smith, now head of bare metal strategy at Equinix and formerly CMO at Packet.

The report forecasts $700 billion will spent in the next ten years on Edge infrastructure including equipment at cell towers, and in street-side cabinets to pre-aggregate Edge data, and also on hardware at central office sites and smaller data centers. All this will serve an Edge market that is focused on specific use cases including 5G, content delivery, and streaming games.

Overall, Edge will consume 100 GigaWatts by 2028 - and the Asia Pacific region has a head start, with 187MW of equipment already installed in markets including Australia, Japan, Korea, and China, the report says.

The Linux Foundation, a non-profit body that looks after some active open source groups, has taken an interest in the State of the Edge project from the start. The consortium gave its Open Glossary document to the Linux Foundation to manage, and it became part of the Foundation's own Edge umbrella group LF Edge, launched early in 2019.

The Foundation's Arpit Joshipura, general manager, for Edge and IoT, wrote the foreword to the State of the Edge 2020 report, saying that "open source will play a key role" in Edge innovation, and that "Edge computing has already begun its journey as an inherently open ecosystem."

State of the Edge was founded in 2017 by Vapor IO, Packet (now part of Equinix), the Ericsson Edge Gravity project, Arm, and Rafay Systems. Trifiro and Smith will remain to co-chair the project within the LF Edge program.

The group plans to produce its State of the Edge 2021 report by the end of 2020, and will continue to develop the Open Glossary, and an Edge Computing Landscape document.

LF Edge’s other projects include the Akraino Edge Stack, Baetyl, EdgeX Foundry, Fledge, Home Edge and Project EVE.